


Light Fantastic

by Missy



Category: A League of Their Own (1992)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Convenient Slow Dance (TV Tropes), Drunkenness, Established Relationship, F/M, Humor, Meeting the Parents, Road Trips, Romance, Under the Influence - Lightweight character gets drunk, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 16:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21077723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: It's not that Dottie doesn't know how to slow dance - it's that she doesn't know how to slow-dance with Jimmy.Or: Dottie and Bob broke up during their engagement and Bob has invited Dottie to their reception - and she's brought along her new boyfriend, her coach.





	Light Fantastic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegantstupidity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/gifts).

It’s less that Dottie doesn’t know how to dance than she doesn’t know how to dance with Jimmy. 

The boys back on the farm, in high school –they were easy. Mostly she had to dance a foot apart from them, anyway – leaping through big-arm-sweeping square dances with their toes tapping in the sod and her body being flung from one end of the floor to the other. It was the same with the farmers she’d worked with at the diary before the league became so important to her; feet apart, one-two beat, big smiles, slide through his legs like a fresh—born calf. So, Dottie knew how to swing dance, of course, but that was a different practice from the elegance requires by a mature, sophisticated wedding.

Dancing with Jimmy required intimacy, and intimacy was something Dottie didn’t have that much experience with yet.

Worse, it wasn’t as if the outing they were about to attend was an impersonal, informal, chatty situation. Of course Bob had to tell her he was going to get married when he shipped back in at the end of the war with a permanent limp – his way of staying friends with her after their extremely awkward mutual breakup hosted through telegrams received through various stops along the road (she still wonder if he’d gotten the engagement ring she’d mailed back to a base address in Germany). And of course, Dottie was invited to the wedding. Of course, neither she nor Jimmy had any experience slow dancing – or acting like a couple in public, beyond a couple of silly league-sponsored photoshoots that had ended up in a couple of fan slicks. 

And of course, no one in her family but Kit had yet met her brand-new boyfriend, their coach, whose awkward hug when she’d gotten Bob’s ultimate telegram asking for his ring back on the road had turned into an embrace and then turned into a hot-and-heavy makeout session against the side of the bus, which had turned into several more make-out sessions that wandered beneath clothing until she’d twitched and rose and fluttered with the rhythm and had left them both highly satisfied but desperately yearning for more – more that they couldn’t have, yet.

Hell, Dottie was tempted to marry him, as strange as it would look – jumping from one engagement to another in the space of a year. As satisfied as Jimmy left her with just his hands and mouth, the main event that Mae and Doris and Marla and Betty and the rest of the girls kept whispering about had to feel as good as killing a shutout with a great catch.

****

**~~**************************************************************************~~**

The wedding was in late fall, because of course it had to be. Oregon was gorgeous then, but Dottie supposed that it had been created that way years before she was a drop of spit in the ocean. But in late October, with its blazing crown of leaves and its chilly breezes, it was almost like waltzing into heaven. 

At least the league’s activities were over – the Peaches had placed second, had lost to the Belles. She and Kit had hugged when the game was over, but the two-week drive across the country had set a fire in Dottie’s belly. Damn it, she wanted more – wanted next season, the feeling of a ball smacking her glove, to knock one over the fence, run a base – anything. The idea of life as a housewife seemed anathema to everything she’d learned about herself during the summer season.

Jimmy did half the driving and they kept each other awake with coffee, debates, and loud singalongs to country music and swing ballads. As they swung off the main road and to a bumpy, rocky path that marked the way home, Jimmy shot her a worried look.

“You’re thinking about Kit,” he said.

“No, I’m not thinking about my sister, I’m thinking about you watching the road. There are cattle up over the hill.” They pulled to a stop at the crest of the hill, where, sure enough, three cows were loitering, munching on nearby branches.

“Come on! Get going!” Jimmy yelled out his window. The bull stared back at him and kept chewing his grass. He honked the horn, and then slumped behind the wheel with a whine.

“Want me to take care of it?” Dottie said.

“How the heck are you going to ‘take care of it’?” asked Jimmy. “Are you a cow whisperer?”

Dottie rolled her eyes and got out of the car. She noticed for a moment that his eyes had widened as she grabbed the cow by its horns and led it off the road, then strode back to the car and buckled in.

“I have no idea how you did that,” he said. But as he restarted the car, Dottie kept frowning.

“C’mon. The ’44 season’ll come,” he reminded her. “And then you’ll get over the fact that Kit got the winning homer.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me there’s no crying in baseball so I can pour this cold coffee in your lap?”

“You like my lap too much to do anything terrible to it,” he said.

Fair enough. Dottie could remember the first third-base night. She's pitched a full shut out that afternoon, and the two of them had gotten into a ten minute argument about shot calling before kissing him passionately on the mouth. And then more had happened. And more...

“Just try to relax. I promise, the weekend won’t be that bad.”

“You’re not a psychic,” she pointed out. 

But this little drop of hope was easier to cling to than anything Dottie had to hold on to yet. She leaned into his shoulder and they allowed the Andrews Sisters to sing them into a sense of security.

****

**~~**************************************************************************~~**

Jimmy, to his credit, was doing a good job straightening up and flying right. His face was clean-shaven. He was actually sober. He called her ‘madam’ and replied to her mother’s polite questions, his father’s constant discussion of the upcoming Bears football game. He spoke about his baseball career without cursing once. Her father beamed with pride as he served up fried chicken and salad.

Dottie remained aware of the empty seat where Kit would have been sitting, where Dottie would likely not see her sit until Thanksgiving. Kit had moved to Madison in the off-season and was rooming with one of her Belle teammates; finally away from Dottie’s so-called shadow.

Dottie could feel how sweaty her palms were; she loved her parents, but being exposed to their intense expectations alone while sitting next to her coach-slash-boyfriend could sometimes rattle her steel reserve. Her mother was a good woman, an upstanding type; she’d been a part of her church sewing circle for twenty years. All of the little looks she kept shooting her daughter It was as if she could x-ray Jimmy with her bright eyes, she’d read the words “My brilliant eldest baby has fallen in love with a reprobate, how could she disappoint me so?” 

Dottie doubled down on the wine during dinner. She realized she’d had a little bit too much to drink when Jimmy escorted her to the porch. She could vaguely hear Walt Winchell talking about Lucille Ball on the radio as Jimmy steered her toward the front bench.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you blasted,” he said. “Didn’t know you couldn’t handle your booze, Hinson.”

She rolled her eyes, pointing at a spot she would later realize was just beyond his right shoulder. “I can handle pop fly balls going over my head and air raid practice, I can sure as hell handle a few glasses of wine.”

“Nope. C’mon Dottie – I’ve been sober as a church mouse all week. This relationship thing is a two-way street – if I’m gonna be sober, you’ve gotta stay sober too.”

Dottie took one look at Jimmy and threw up in his lap.

****

**~~**************************************************************************~~**

Goody Headache Powder really did work miracles. By the time the ceremony rolled around the next morning, Dottie felt like an actual human being again – wearing her nicest dress, the one with the high neck and the long sleeves, because, as Mae would say, pulling your breasts out at your ex’s wedding wasn’t a good game plan unless you wanted him back.

Dottie definitely didn’t want Bob back; she knew that for sure after last night. As peach crinoline rasped against her knees as Jimmy held the door open for her - his breath smelled of mouthwash and his eyes were fondly tolerant.

If he told anyone she’d thrown up on him on her parent’s front porch, she would deck him – right there in front of Bob, his wife, and the priest.

No, that wasn’t fair. Jimmy had been unstintingly kind and helpful to her –a rare state for him, but he had been _Trying._ And what had Dottie done, uncharacteristically under the pressure? Choked.

Just like with Kit.

She was such a fool.

Jimmy jostled her shoulder when the wedding march started. They stood, and Bob’s bride – a young-looking thing – walked down the aisle. Dottie had heard through the grapevine that she was an army nurse, that he’d met her while he was laid up with his wound. She seemed to be floating on air. Had Dottie ever floated with Bob? No, she’d stomped.

And she did both with Jimmy.

Bob kept his eyes averted from her section of the church throughout the ceremony, and she let the holy words wash over her. It was peaceful, no matter how awkwardly things had ended between her and Bob.

But the receiving line provided him with no refuge; there was Dottie, extending a gloved hand. “Bob, you look tanned,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve been out, trying to get my knee back in working order. Just…golfing,” he rambled. “Dottie, this is Georgia,” he said. “Georgia, this is Dottie!”

Dottie’s vague impression of the woman before her – a cloud of blonde, bubbles in a champagne glass. “This is Dottie!” the woman echoed. She grinned and shook Dottie’s hand (not her catching hand, thank God) as hard as she could. 

“Thank you so much for dumping Bob,” she said. 

“Well…it was my pleasure!” Dottie said. She glanced at Jimmy, who was having a loud, protracted conversation with Bob about the War. Two men could stand togethe in a blast zone and still manage to find a way to agree about the weather.

“I mean I know you’re really something, but me and Bob – well, who else am I going to talk to about ruptured spleens? We just suit, y’know? Like you and your fella.”

Dottie grinned. Jimmy caught her eye and winked. 

“I guess we are.”

****

**~~**************************************************************************~~**

Dottie and Jimmy danced every single fast number at the reception. They moved together like greased lightning, then had more punch and cake and veal prince orloff than one could shake a stick at.

But then – sweaty and laughing – they were brought up short as violins wept and the bandleader sang of love lost, broken promised and the sad girls who could never say no to the good life.

They folded together, awkwardly. At first they had no idea how to move together, stepping on toes, squeezing too closely together. Perhaps a ruler would have helped them dance the required distance apart, thought Dottie to herself tartly. Jimmy, as always, showed his frustration first.

“I paid that band twenty bucks to keep playing swing numbers,” Jimmy hissed through his teeth, but his face was buried in Dottie’s neck, his breath whisking her curls around like a windstorm.

“Shut up,” Dottie said. “Let me enjoy this.” And burrowed a little closer, with one more indistinct grumble. She kissed his chin for his kindness toward her.

This, she realized, would be what slow-dancing with Jimmy was like. Easy. Even a little bit gentle. And if the steps faltered a bit, and if they managed to get out of sync with one another, well – they had time to practice.

For Dottie had a feeling they’d ultimately be doing this for their whole lives.


End file.
